Saturday, November 25, 2006

All About Eve - Blessed by the Angels

Julianne Regan, a Coventry girl who moved to London at the age of 19 in order to become a music journalist. In 1982, after six months of study, she started working as a freelance contributor to the music magazine ZigZag. Her first piece was an interview with Gene Loves Jezebel, a band Julianne regularly went to see whenever they played. She kept in touch with the Welsh twins after the interview and got asked if she could play bass as they were in need of a player. In February 1982 she joined the band, playing bass and doing backing vocals on their debut 12" Shaving My Neck (Situation 2SIT18T, released in June.)

After 10 months, in the beginning of 1983, Julianne left the band. The ZigZag magazine closed down at the time, and she started working in a bookshop in Hampstead. In her sparetime she recorded demotapes, one of which she sent to Ivo of the 4AD record label. Ivo passed it on to Manuela Zwingman who had just left her band X-Mal Deutschland and had moved to London from her native Germany. Manuela wanted to start a new band, and after being put in touch with Julianne in February 1984, The Swarm was formed.

After advertising in Melody Maker for a keyboard player, a bassist and a lead guitarist, Tim Bricheno came down from Huddersfield to join them as guitarist. He had just left his band, Aemotii Crii, after one year of playing gothrock. The Swarm rehearsed for a long time with James Richard Jackson on bass, who stayed in the band until 1985; this in contrast to short time members Chris from Vague fanzine and Gus Ferguson. Later on Julianne would describe their music as 'cacophonous Sub-Goth shit.'1990 was a relatively quiet, though very creative year for the Eves. In April they played 3 sold out concerts at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall, the last gigs to include Tim. This year saw Tim's relationship with Julianne end (this is what the song Farewell Mr. Sorrow is about - see lyrics), as well as his relation with the band; the latter because of different ambitions / opinions.

Tim joined The Sisters Of Mercy and later started his own band CNN, who were forced to rename after their second release and became XC-NN; his latest project from 1998 on is Tin Star. For the handful of European mainland gigs in July and August, Keith Airey (an old mate from Mark’s Nik Kershaw days) was the stand-in guitarist.

One month before Tim left, Julianne had met guitarist Marty Willson-Piper of Australian band The Church when they played the Kilburn National. When a new guitarist was needed, Julianne contacted him and he agreed to give it a try, thus being in 2 bands at the same time. He quickly became a full member of the band. With the new blood a change of direction took place, and the Eves enjoyed a very creative time, writing more than 30 new songs with Marty, and rehearsing together in summer and autumn.

In January 1991 Warne Livesey (who had previously worked with Midnight Oil and Deacon Blue) joined in at Mill studios in Berkshire as producer of their third album, and last year’s demos were worked out. Recording took also place at 3 other studios, and expensive string sections and a guest appearance of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour required a big budget.

In September 1991 the new album was released, with the working title 'Hush' (see discography) being skipped in favour of 'Touched By Jesus'. In the same year 3 singles were released : Farewell Mr. Sorrow, Strange Way, and The Dreamer. Promotional concerts were played during September and November. As chart places weren’t as high as the record company had hoped for, 1991 saw All About Eve’s contract with Phonogram end. Julianne was still offered a solo deal, which she declined.